Los Angeles Dodgers

History

In the 20th century, the team, then known as the Robins, won league pennants in 1916 and 1920, losing the World Series both times, first to Boston and then Cleveland. In the 1930s, the team changed its name to the Dodgers, named after the Brooklyn pedestrians who dodged the streetcars in the city. In 1941, the Dodgers captured their third National League pennant, only to lose to the New York Yankees. This marked the onset of the Dodgers–Yankees rivalry, as the Dodgers would face them in their next six World Series appearances. Led by Jackie Robinson, the first black Major League Baseball player of the modern era; and three-time National League Most Valuable Player Roy Campanella, also signed out of the Negro Leagues, the Dodgers captured their first World Series title in 1955 by defeating the Yankees for the first time, a story notably described in the 1972 book The Boys of Summer.

Following the 1957 season the team left Brooklyn. In just their second season in Los Angeles, the Dodgers won their second World Series title, beating the Chicago White Sox in six games in 1959. Spearheaded by the dominant pitching style of Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, the Dodgers captured three pennants in the 1960s and won two more World Series titles, sweeping the Yankees in four games in 1963, and edging the Minnesota Twins in seven in 1965. The 1963 sweep was their second victory against the Yankees, and their first against them as a Los Angeles team. The Dodgers won four more pennants in 1966, 1974, 1977 and 1978, but lost in each World Series appearance. They went on to win the World Series again in 1981, thanks in part to pitching sensation Fernando Valenzuela. The early 1980s were affectionately dubbed "Fernandomania." In 1988, another pitching hero, Orel Hershiser, again led them to a World Series victory, aided by one of the most memorable home runs of all time, by their injured star outfielder Kirk Gibson coming off the bench to pinch hit with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning of game 1, in his only appearance of the series.

The Dodgers share a fierce rivalry with the San Francisco Giants, the oldest rivalry in baseball, dating back to when the two franchises played in New York City. Both teams moved west for the 1958 season. The Brooklyn Dodgers and Los Angeles Dodgers have collectively appeared in the World Series 18 times, while the New York Giants and San Francisco Giants have collectively appeared 20 times and have been invited 21 times. The Giants have won two more World Series (8); the Dodgers have won 21 National League pennants, while the Giants hold the record with 23. Although the two franchises have enjoyed near equal success, the city rivalries are rather lopsided and in both cases, a team's championships have predated to the other's first one in that particular location. When the two teams were based in New York, the Giants won five World Series championships, and the Dodgers one. After the move to California, the Dodgers have won five in Los Angeles, the Giants have won three in San Francisco.

Brooklyn Dodgers

The Dodgers were founded in 1883 as the Brooklyn Atlantics, taking the name of a defunct team that had played in Brooklyn before them. The team joined the American Association in 1884 and won the AA championship in 1889 before joining the National League in 1890. They promptly won the NL Championship their first year in the League. The team was known alternatively as the Bridegrooms, Grooms, Superbas, Robins, and Trolley Dodgers before officially becoming the Dodgers in the 1930s.

In Brooklyn, the Dodgers won the NL pennant several times (1890, 1899, 1900, 1916, 1920, 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1955, 1956) and the World Series in 1955. After moving to Los Angeles, the team won National League pennants in 1959, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1974, 1977, 1978, 1981, and 1988, with World Series championships in 1959, 1963, 1965, 1981, 1988. In all, the Dodgers have appeared in 18 World Series: 9 in Brooklyn and 9 in Los Angeles.

Jackie Robinson

For most of the first half of the 20th century, no Major League Baseball team employed an African American player. Jackie Robinson became the first African American to play for a Major League Baseball team when he played his first major league game on April 15, 1947, as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers. This was mainly due to general manager Branch Rickey's efforts. The deeply religious Rickey's motivation appears to have been primarily moral, although business considerations were also a factor. Rickey was a member of The Methodist Church, the antecedent denomination to The United Methodist Church of today, which was a strong advocate for social justice and active later in the American Civil Rights Movement.

This event was the harbinger of the integration of professional sports in the United States, the concomitant demise of the Negro Leagues, and is regarded as a key moment in the history of the American Civil Rights movement. Robinson was an exceptional player, a speedy runner who sparked the team with his intensity. He was the inaugural recipient of the Rookie of the Year award, which is now named the Jackie Robinson Award in his honor. The Dodgers' willingness to integrate, when most other teams refused to, was a key factor in their 1947–1956 success. They won six pennants in those 10 years with the help of Robinson, three-time MVP Roy Campanella, Cy Young Award winner Don Newcombe, Jim Gilliam and Joe Black. Robinson would eventually go on to become the first African-American elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.

Move to Los Angeles

Real estate businessman Walter O'Malley had acquired majority ownership of the Dodgers in 1950, when he bought the shares of his co-owners, Branch Rickey and the estate of James L. Smith. Before long he was working to buy new land in Brooklyn to build a more accessible and better arrayed ballpark than Ebbets Field. Beloved as it was, Ebbets Field was no longer well-served by its aging infrastructure and the Dodgers could no longer sell out the park even in the heat of a pennant race, despite largely dominating the National League from 1946 to 1957.

O'Malley wanted to build a new, state of the art stadium in Brooklyn. But City Planner Robert Moses and New York politicians refused to grant him the eminent domain authority required to build pursuant to O'Malley's plans. To put pressure on the city, during the 1955 season, O'Malley announced that the team would play seven regular season games and one exhibition game at Jersey City's Roosevelt Stadium in 1956. Moses and the City considered this an empty threat, and did not believe O'Malley would go through with moving the team from New York City.

After teams began to travel to and from games by air instead of train, it became possible to include locations in the far west. Los Angeles officials attended the 1956 World Series looking to the Washington Senators to move to the West Coast. When O'Malley heard that LA was looking for a club, he sent word to the Los Angeles officials that he was interested in talking. LA offered him what New York would not: a chance to buy land suitable for building a ballpark, and own that ballpark, giving him complete control over all revenue streams. When the news came out, NYC Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr. and Moses made an offer to build a ballpark on the World's Fair Grounds in Queens that would be shared by the Giants and Dodgers. However, O'Malley was interested in his park only under his conditions, and the plans for a new stadium in Brooklyn seemed like a pipe dream. O'Malley decided to move the Dodgers to California, convincing Giants owner Horace Stoneham to move to San Francisco instead of Minneapolis to keep another team on the West Coast to ease approval of the moves. There was no turning back: the Dodgers were heading for Hollywood.

The Dodgers played their final game at Ebbets Field on September 24, 1957, which the Dodgers won 2–0 over the Pittsburgh Pirates.

New York would remain a one-team town with the New York Yankees until 1962, when Joan Payson founded the New York Mets and brought National League baseball back to the city. The blue background used by the Dodgers, would be adopted by the Mets, honoring their New York NL forebears with a blend of Dodgers blue and Giants orange.

Los Angeles Dodgers

The Dodgers were the first Major League Baseball team to ever play in Los Angeles. On April 18, 1958, the Dodgers played their first LA game, defeating the former New York and now new San Francisco Giants, 6–5, before 78,672 fans at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Catcher Roy Campanella, left partially paralyzed in an off-season accident, was never able to play in Los Angeles.

Construction on Dodger Stadium was completed in time for Opening Day 1962. With its clean, simple lines and its picturesque setting amid hills and palm trees, the ballpark quickly became an icon of the Dodgers and their new California lifestyle. O'Malley was determined that there would not be a bad seat in the house, achieving this by cantilevered grandstands that have since been widely imitated. More importantly for the team, the stadium's spacious dimensions, along with other factors, gave defense an advantage over offense and the Dodgers moved to take advantage of this by assembling a team that would excel with its pitching.

Since moving to Los Angeles, the Dodgers have won nine more National League Championships and five World Series rings.

Rivalries

The Dodgers' rivalry with the San Francisco Giants dates back to the 19th century, when the two teams were based in New York; the rivalry with the New York Yankees took place when the Dodgers were based in New York, but was revived with their East Coast/West Coast World Series battles in 1963, 1977, 1978, and 1981. The Dodgers rivalry with the Philadelphia Phillies also dates back to their days in New York, but was most fierce during the 1970s, 1980s, and 2000s. The Dodgers also had a heated rivalry with the Cincinnati Reds during the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. The rivalry with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and the San Diego Padres dates back to the Angels' and Padres' respective inaugural seasons (Angels in 1961, Padres in 1969). Regional proximity is behind the rivalries with both the Angels and the Padres.

San Francisco Giants

The Dodgers–Giants rivalry is one of the longest-standing rivalries in American baseball.

The feud between the Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants began in the late 19th century when both clubs were based in New York City, with the Dodgers playing in Brooklyn and the Giants playing at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan. After the 1957 season, Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley moved the team to Los Angeles for financial and other reasons. Along the way, he managed to convince Giants owner Horace Stoneham—who was considering moving his team to Minnesota—to preserve the rivalry by bringing his team to California as well. New York baseball fans were stunned and heartbroken by the move. Given that the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco have been bitter rivals in economic, cultural, and political arenas for over a century and a half, the new venue in California became fertile ground for its transplantation.

Each team's ability to endure for over a century while moving across an entire continent, as well as the rivalry's leap from a cross-city to a cross-state engagement, have led to the rivalry being considered one of the greatest in sports history.

Unlike many other historic baseball match-ups in which one team remains dominant for most of their history, the Dodgers–Giants rivalry has exhibited a persistent balance in the respective successes of the two teams. While the Giants have more wins in franchise history, and lead all NL teams with 23 National League pennants, the Dodgers are second, having won 21; the Giants have won eight World Series titles, while the Dodgers have won six. The 2010 World Series was the Giants' first championship since moving to California, while the Dodgers' last title came in the 1988 World Series.

Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim

This rivalry refers to a series of games played with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. The series takes its name from the massive freeway system in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area, the home of both teams; one could travel from one team's stadium to the other simply by traveling along Interstate 5. The term is akin to Subway Series which refers to meetings between New York City baseball teams. The term "Freeway Series" also inspired the official name of the regions' NHL rivalry: the Freeway Face-Off

New York Yankees

The Dodgers–Yankees rivalry is one of the most well-known rivalries in Major League Baseball. The two teams have met eleven times in the World Series, more times than any other pair from the American and National Leagues. The initial significance was embodied in the two teams' proximity in New York City, when the Dodgers initially played in Brooklyn. After the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958, the rivalry retained its significance as the two teams represented the dominant cities on each coast of the United States, and since the 1980s, the two largest cities in the United States.

Although the rivalry's significance arose from the two teams' numerous World Series meetings, the Yankees and Dodgers have not met in the World Series since 1981. They would not play each other in a non-exhibition game until 2004, when they played a three-game interleague series. Their last meeting was in September 2016, when the Dodgers won two out of three games in New York.

Fan support

The Dodgers have a loyal fanbase, evidenced by the fact that the Dodgers were the first MLB team to attract more than 3 million fans in a season (in 1978), and accomplished that feat six more times before any other franchise did it once. The Dodgers drew at least 3 million fans for 15 consecutive seasons from 1996 to 2010, the longest such streak in all of MLB. On July 3, 2007, Dodgers management announced that total franchise attendance, dating back to 1901, had reached 175 million, a record for all professional sports. In 2007, the Dodgers set a franchise record for single-season attendance, attracting over 3.8 million fans. In 2009, the Dodgers led MLB in total attendance. The Dodger baseball cap is consistently in the top three in sales. During the 2011-2012 season, Frank McCourt, the owner of the Dodgers at that time, was going through a rough divorce with his wife over who should be the owner of the Dodger team. Instead, Frank McCourt paid $131 million to his wife as part of the divorce settlement. As a result, the team payroll was financially low for a big-budget team crippling the Dodgers in the free-agent market. Collectively, the team performance waned due to the distracting drama in the front office resulting in low attendance numbers.

Given the team's proximity to Hollywood, numerous celebrities can often be seen attending home games at Dodger Stadium. Celebrities such as co-owner Magic Johnson, Mary Hart, Larry King, Tiger Woods, Alyssa Milano and Shia LaBeouf are known to sit at field box seats behind home plate where they sign autographs for fellow Dodger fans. Actor Bryan Cranston is a lifelong Dodger fan.

The Dodgers set the world record for the largest attendance for a single baseball game during an exhibition game against the Boston Red Sox on March 28, 2008 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in honor of the Dodgers 50th anniversary, with 115,300 fans in attendance. All proceeds from the game benefited the official charity of the Dodgers, ThinkCure! which supports cancer research at Children's Hospital Los Angeles and City of Hope. Mainly Dodgers fans are from their own location in southern California and also parts of southern Nevada.

Radio and television

Vin Scully had called Dodgers games since 1950. His longtime partners were Jerry Doggett (1956–1987) and Ross Porter (1977–2004). In 1976, he was selected by Dodgers fans as the Most Memorable Personality (on the field or off) in the team's history. He is also a recipient of the Baseball Hall of Fame's Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasters (inducted in 1982). Unlike the modern style in which multiple sportscasters have an on-air conversation (usually with one functioning as play-by-play announcer and the other[s] as color commentator), Scully, Doggett and Porter generally called games solo, trading with each other inning-by-inning. In the 1980s and 1990s, Scully would call the entire radio broadcast except for the third and seventh inning, allowing the other Dodger commentators to broadcast an inning.

When Doggett retired after the 1987 season, he was replaced by Hall-of-Fame Dodgers pitcher Don Drysdale, who previously broadcast games for the California Angels and Chicago White Sox. Drysdale died in his hotel room following a heart attack before a game in Montreal in 1993. This was a difficult broadcast for Scully and Porter who could not mention it on-air until Drysdale's family had been notified and the official announcement made. He was replaced by former Dodgers outfielder Rick Monday. Porter's tenure ended after the 2004 season, after which the format of play-by-play announcers and color commentators was installed, led by Monday and newcomer Charley Steiner. Scully, however, continued to announce solo.

Scully called roughly 100 games per season (all home games and road games in California and Arizona) for both flagship radio station KLAC and on television for SportsNet LA. Scully was simulcast for the first three innings of each of his appearances, then announced only for the TV audience. If Scully was calling the game, Steiner took over play-by-play on radio beginning with the fourth inning, with Monday as color commentator. If Scully was not calling the game, Steiner and Orel Hershiser called the entire game on television while Monday and Kevin Kennedy did the same on radio. In the event the Dodgers were in post-season play, Scully called the first three and last three innings of the radio broadcast alone and Steiner and Monday handled the middle innings. Vin Scully retired from calling games in 2016. His tenure with the Dodgers was the longest with any single sports team at 67 years.

The Dodgers also broadcast on radio in Spanish, and the play-by-play is voiced by another Frick Award winner, Jaime Jarrín, who has been with the Dodgers since 1959. The color analyst for some games is former Dodger pitcher Fernando Valenzuela, for whom Jarrin once translated post-game interviews. The Spanish-language radio flagship station is KTNQ.

Management

Team captains

Retired numbers

Koufax, Campanella, and Robinson were the first Dodgers to have their numbers retired, in a ceremony at Dodger Stadium on June 4, 1972. This was the year in which Koufax was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame; Robinson and Campanella were already Hall-of-Famers.

Alston's number was retired in the year following his retirement as the Dodgers manager, six years before he was inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Gilliam died suddenly in 1978 after a 28-year career with the Dodgers organization. The Dodgers retired his number two days after his death, prior to Game 1 of the 1978 World Series. He is the only non-Hall-of-Famer to have his number retired by the Dodgers.

Beginning in 1980, the Dodgers have retired the numbers of longtime Dodgers (Snider, Reese, Drysdale, Lasorda, and Sutton) during the seasons in which each was inducted into the Hall of Fame.

In 1997, 50 years after he broke the color barrier and 25 years after the Dodgers retired his number, Robinson's No.42 was retired throughout Major League Baseball. Robinson is the only major league baseball player to have this honor bestowed upon him. Starting in the 2007 season, Jackie Robinson Day (April 15, commemorating Opening Day of Robinson's rookie season of 1947) has featured many or all players and coaches wearing the number 42 as a tribute to Robinson.

The Dodgers have not issued the number 34 since the departure of Fernando Valenzuela in 1991, although it has not been officially retired.

Presidents

Managers

Since 1884, the Dodgers have used a total of 31 Managers, the most current being Dave Roberts, who was appointed following the 2015 postseason, after the departure of Don Mattingly.

Over the nearly 43 years from 1954 to mid-1996, the Dodgers employed only two managers, Walter Alston and Tommy Lasorda, both of whom are in the Hall of Fame. During this entire time period of extraordinary stability, the Dodgers were family owned by Walter O'Malley and then his son Peter O'Malley. It was during this era that the Dodgers won 11 of their 21 pennants, and all six of their World Series championships.

The managers of the Los Angeles Dodgers (1958–present) are as follows:

General Managers

Public address announcers

From the Dodgers' move to Los Angeles from Brooklyn in 1958, the Dodgers employed a handful of well-known public address announcers; the most famous of which was John Ramsey, who served as the PA voice of the Dodgers from 1958 until his retirement in 1982; as well as announcing at other venerable Los Angeles venues, including the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and Sports Arena, and the Forum. Ramsey died in 1990.

From 1958 to 1982, Doug Moore, a local businessman; Philip Petty, an Orange County Superior Court Judge; and Dennis Packer; served as back-up voices for John Ramsey for the Dodgers, California Angels, Los Angeles Chargers, USC football and Los Angeles Rams. Packer was Ramsey's primary backup for the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Kings until Ramsey's retirement from the Forum in 1978. Thereafter, Packer became the public address announcer for the Lakers, Kings, indoor soccer and indoor tennis events at the Forum.

Nick Nickson, a radio broadcaster for the Los Angeles Kings, replaced John Ramsey as the Dodger Stadium public address announcer in 1983 and served in that capacity through the 1989 season to work with the Kings full-time.

Dennis Packer and Pete Arbogast were emulators of John Ramsey, using the same stentorian style of announcing Ramsey was famous for. Packer and Arbogast shared the stadium announcing chores for the 1994 FIFA World Cup matches at the Rose Bowl. Arbogast won the Dodgers job on the day that Ramsey died on January 25, 1990, by doing a verbatim imitation of Ramsey's opening and closing remarks that were standard at each game. His replacement, in 1993 was Mike Carlucci, who remained as the Dodgers' PA voice until 2003 to concentrate on his voiceover and acting career along with his Olympics announcing duties.

Through 2014, the Dodgers public address announcer was Eric Smith, who also announces for the Los Angeles Clippers and USC Trojans.

On April 3, 2015 the Dodgers announced that former radio broadcaster Todd Leitz would become their new public address announcer. Leitz was an anchor and news reporter in Los Angeles at KNX 1070 AM for 10 years, and a news reporter at KABC 790 for two years.

Other

Vin Scully is permanently honored in the Hall's "Scribes & Mikemen" exhibit as a result of winning the Ford C. Frick Award in 1982. As with all Frick Award recipients, he is not officially considered an inducted member of the Hall of Fame.

Sue Falsone, served as the first female physical therapist in Major League baseball, and from 2012 to 2013, was the first female head athletic trainer.